Consumer Durables since 1991: Abhishek Gupta

Abhishek Gupta, Lead - Corporate Programs at Skills Academy Private Limited, explains to us the phenomenal shift that the IT sector has seen with respect to availability of jobs. He also discusses the transition the Indian consumer durables landscape has seen due to increased disposable income and subsequent rise in the risk taking ability of consumers.

Read the transcript below:

The biggest change that I saw and felt myself was the opening up of IT sector. So the IT sector came in and suddenly everyone of us who was yearning to become an engineer or an MBA suddenly started getting jobs. So my MBA got me offers from TCS and etc which were good jobs. The same engineering and MBA weren’t getting us any jobs earlier and then the next immediate thing that happened was that because there were jobs and they were well paying then the overseas offers started coming in for everyone of us. That suddenly, what it did was that our disposable income suddenly became huge. At least people before my generation, their primary income was the government income, right? Those people who were in middle class were usually in the government jobs. Because the private jobs weren’t either there or if they were there, they were scarce. They weren’t paying well. Government jobs were supposed to be paying well which was just the middle class kind of a paying. Now private sector opened up, paid well and paid like three times the money that my dad got when I was 21.So suddenly that sudden disposable income that I got brought us into a category where from the just affording things we could have got luxuries. So I had three pair of trousers then, I never thought that I minded that so much. There were a few people in the class who could have more clothes but most of us were like me and there were few who didn’t even have that. So it was just like a very normal upbringing of a middle class where you didn’t feel out of place. Everyone was like that. The moment I finished my MBA, two years later things completely changed. But having said that I think the big change that I found was that people were more confident that they will find jobs. So they were ready to take risks. A lot of them quit their jobs, came to MBA, paid 20 lakh rupees, and that they would be able to earn that much of money post MBA which wasn’t the case in ’96-’98. In quality parameters we have either gone worse or remained the same. So that hasn’t improved really. In 1991 government schools were not that bad an option, that’s number one and number two is the private schooling. I think private schooling has seen a huge jump in terms of what private schools were in 1991. In even 1991 private schools were just a notch above the government schools. I think everyone else pales in front of one thing, which was the IT jobs. Everything else fails. I think so yeah.